Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Am I Missing Something?

A Brilliant Conflict

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

With his stock on the rise due to the slow-building success of the brilliant HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER (1986), someone gave John McNaughton 2 million bucks to make a second feature. Filmed primarily in 1988, THE BORROWER ended up sitting on a shelf for several years until "Henry" finally received a proper (albeit limited) theatrical release in 1990. The delay was likely caused by two favors: 1. It was distributed by Cannon, who were having major financial problems at the time, and 2. so it could piggyback off of "Henry"s excellent reviews and publicity. Long story short, it didn't work. "The Borrower" failed to come anywhere near the critical OR commercial success of the director's previous film. Instead, it quickly faded from view after its initial VHS release. Even now, the film is hardly ever discussed. Most interviewers just skip right over it when questioning McNaughton as if it doesn't even exist. One may assume all of that means this is awful, but that turns out not to be the case at all. If anything, this film is underrated and deserves much better treatment than it has received over the years.Things open aboard a spaceship where a bug-like alien criminal receives the worst punishment an alien can receive: being "genetically devolved" into a human (ha!) The alien (Robert Dryer) is then banished to Earth, where he'll be forced to live out the rest of his days in the company of primitive Earth scum. Oh yeah, there's one other tiny little problem; because the aliens haven't quite mastered the de-evolution technique, the alien's head will occasionally explode and he'll be forced to acquire new ones every now and then. The banished alien is then dropped off and his head promptly pops. Thankfully a redneck poacher (HENRY co-star Tom Towles) is around to become the first donor. Alien Towles manages to get a ride from a bimbo teenager (Zoe Trilling) after she runs him over and eventually finds himself wandering the streets of downtown Chicago, where he's befriended by a homeless man (Antonio Fargas). Things start to escalate from there. Rae Dawn Chong and Don Gordon play a pair of detectives trying to uncover why decapitated bodies and random heads keep turning up all over the city.What separates this film from numerous others of its type (aside from a very unusual premise) is McNaughton's ability to find quirky humor in the bleak urban setting. The grimy, seedy downtown Chicago of "Henry" is pretty much the exact same Chicago seen in "The Borrower." Druggies, thugs, hookers and homeless people lurk in the alleyways. People urinate right in the street and drop rats into someone's dinner at a soup kitchen, gang members shoot up diners and - in addition to the alien killer - there's a violent serial rapist (Neil Giuntoli) on the loose. Hell, there's even rampant degeneracy in places you may not expect, like at a hospital where a doctor (Tony Amendola) is so busy screwing a nurse he doesn't seem to care that people are literally dying all around him. Even paying attention to minor details in the background, you'll notice things like posters for child abuse. Everything pretty much is laid out to illustrate that this can be an ugly world we live in, which pretty much just confirms that the alien's punishment was an apt one! While this could have easily ended up being depressing, it's not at all because there's humor, satire and / or social commentary around every turn. Instead of slapping together a routine sci-fi action buddy cop pursuit film, McNaughton is aiming for something a bit different here. When it works, it's great. When it doesn't, you're zipped right along to something else so it hardly even matters.The film also offers up many odd, hilarious and memorable scenes. My favorite is when a couple are lying in bed watching "The Garbage Pail Kids Movie" (!!) while their son's amateur rock band ("I like the part about killing your parents.") are downstairs being attacked by the alien, who's been reduced to wearing a dog's head! And then there are other bizarre scenes that, quite frankly, I have no idea what exactly they were shooting for, but the set pieces are all entertaining, bizarre and / or humorous. This film frequently receives two criticisms and both are valid. The first involves the special effects. While Kevin Yagher's gore makeups are really good, there's no explanation behind why the alien's body size and skin color changes with each head swap. The second criticism involves the ending. Well actually, this film really doesn't have an ending. It more kind of just stops and the credits roll. I'm not sure if they ran out of money or time, but concluding things on such an anticlimactic, rushed note leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Regardless, flaws and all, this is conceptually a lot more sophisticated and clever than numerous other ordinary horror and sci-fi films from the 80s and 90s that get a lot more undeserved love and attention than this one does.

John McNaughton's The Borrower isn't a very good film, if you ask me. It tells the story of an extraterrestrial creature who has been devolved into a human, and sent to earth as punishment.His earthly exile is witnessed by a couple of gun totin' hicks. They watch as a man is dropped off by a UFO, and his subsequent fight with an alien. They manage to help run the creature off. But when they go to see if the guy is OK...all they can do is watch as his head inexplicably explodes.He doesn't seem to be dead though. Rather, his body attacks the older hick...removing his head and using it as a replacement.The bloody-necked humanoid-looking creature then starts to roam around skid row, where he befriends a couple of junkies.It seems that he is only able utilize the heads of others for a temporary period...before they start to explode. So he is forced to kill one of the junkies, rip off his head, and replace it with his own in the process. After this incident, he roams around a bit more, before passing out in a museum, and being brought to a hospital.While in the hospital he wakes up and finds a doctor. The doctor tries to examine his bleeding neck, but before he is able to, the creature mutates, into it's semi-monstrous form, and murders him. Ripping off his own head, and replacing it with the doctor's (white head, on a black body). When he does this, his body mutates- like a chameleon- to match it's head. The special effects aren't bad...there's just no story to back it up.The film's most hilarious moment occurs when the creature heads back to the doctor's house- where he meets the doctor's dog. Of course, he rips off it's head and replaces it with his own- rendering him a dog-headed alien-human hybrid.Hearing all sorts of weird noises, one of the metalheads from next door looks over the fence to see what is going on. This gets him attacked and killed, but one of the girls manages to shoot and (seemingly) kill the dog-headed beast, in the process.All the while, a female police detective is on the case, trying to track down whatever the hell is responsible for causing all these gruesome deaths. But she is, herself, being stalked by a psychopath who managed to escape from a prison infirmary.The two story lines don't intersect until the last 5 minutes of the film. Here the alien-infested headless corpse manages to reanimate itself inside the morgue, killing the coroner, and taking over her body- before being shot and killed by the male detective. The opportune alien then takes over the body of the dead psychopath- who had been previously killed by the female detective (explaining why it was in the morgue)- leading to the final showdown between it and her (with help from some random interlopers).When all is said and done, this is a pretty basic and poorly constructed film. They force in all sorts of stuff at the end to try and make it work, but they wind up leaving a multitude of loose ends. If you are planning on enjoying this one, you are going to have to suspend disbelief- in order to get around the various plot holes- and just enjoy the special effects. It's not even that funny really. Certainly not the best example of it's kind.3 out of 10.

From the guy who brought us the unnervingly realistic and tense 'Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986)' comes another genre effort by director John McNaughton, but you can call 'The Borrower' somewhat a total change of pace. Its ridiculous premise bathes itself in hysteria, cheese and an overpowering metallic soundtrack. A true step-down, but the angle has changed for this low-budget outing in favour of a black comedy with a less than serious tone and horrifically in-your-face FX work. It kind reminded of the similar themed 'The Hidden (1987)', which seemed to be a trend-setter for many that followed ('Dark Angel and 'Split Second' shoot to mind) involving cops on the trail of a serial killer that may be of extra-terrestrial origins.A criminal alien is genetically devolved and vanquished to earth in human form. There he discovers that his head has a habit of exploding, forcing him to find another replacement and eventually another one. Police detectives Diana Pierce and her partner Charlie Krieger find themselves on the case of this very demented serial killer who likes to take the heads of the victim, but soon they realise there might be more to this case.As it is it's a mildly fun b-grade romp with numerous moments of flamboyantly gooey head explosions and tearing off heads (kind of like that in 1979 film 'The Dark') to only borrow them. Strangely when the alien does do that, the body changes too, even though its only should be the head. Whoops. The idea shows a breath imagination, but McNaughton's duplicated handling of it is simply disappointing and never variable enough. Even the social element is weakly penned. Other than those unconventional graphic scenes, nothing much tends to happen from its slight structure. It suffers from a languishing last quarter, muddled writing with a redundant sub-plot (though it does tie in at the end… but why?) involving another killer and one of the cops. Even the lighting is so smoky, or some sequences are paved in darkness making it hard to work out certain details. While the action when it occurs is frenetic, there's nothing beating its systematic feel and where we are left with an incomplete feel due to its cop-out ending after rattling climax.Rae Dawn Chong emit's an uninterestingly sullen temperament as detective Pierce and a grizzled Don Gordon is fine as detective Krieger. The support fairs up much better with a delightfully amusing Tom Towles and Antonio Fargas steals some scenes.'The Borrower' is moderate entertainment due largely to the make-up FX, but ends up being bounded in its bizarre concept and plodding narrative.

From John McNaughton, the mastermind behind Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, comes...The Borrower. Whereas Henry is disturbingly realistic, this is the exact opposite. The Borrower is completely absurd. An alien criminal and outcast is de-evolved to human form and exiled to earth. The de-evolution process, however, has made his body unstable and he must "borrow" other people's heads to survive. The story sounds good, but is obviously hard to execute. Tom Towles, also from Henry and numerous other genre classics, is hilarious as one of the borrowed heads. It's too bad that he has the least amount of screen time. The other cast members include Rae Dawn Chong as a detective investigating the murders and Antonio Fargas as a bum that befriends the Borrower. The music is awful and annoying but Kevin Yagher's make-up effects are sufficiently gross. Yagher's gore effects and Towle's performance are the main reasons to watch the movie. The box reads "more animated than Re-Animator" which is a lie but it should please the majority of horror fans.